Snow recap and other nifty info

WOW... that's all I can possibly say to sum up late last week and last weekend. To start things off this is the third largest snowfall event in Blacksburg (and Roanoke) recorded history. Let that sink in for a bit... that's a humongogiganticsorous storm the final counts in Blacksburg varied anywhere from 19-26" (which yes I know is quite a variation) however the number they're going with for all purposes is 20.1 outside of the national weather service building right off campus. for those of you interested the record was set in 1996, and we were a little further off than I thought (my friend misinformed me) it was a whopping 33.2". Don't let that take away from this storm however, we got absolutely pummeled and Virginia tech canceled 2.5 days of school to bring our total since the beginning of existence to a whopping 10 days.

the national weather service did a nice write-up on this storm (as they do for most significant events you just gotta dig around a little) here http://www.erh.noaa.gov/rnk/events/2014/Feb12-13_winterstorm/summary.php and im gonna sum it up a little and throw in some more cool tidbits.

As I mentioned before the high pressure system in the north-east and the low pressure system over the gulf are the perfect type of track to build a storm of this caliber. For future reference every time you see this starting to play out on your tv screen or they start talking about a noreaster start packing up the emergency supplies. These consistently produce the biggest snow events for the east coast, as they typically have the largest moisture build up as you can see here in this lovely sounding.

http://www.spc.noaa.gov/exper/soundings/14021218_OBS/

for those of you tired of clicking on links ill be sure to pretty it up a little tomorrow but its a little late and homework took me a tad longer than I thought it would and I really really wanted to get this done.

These lines and graphs may look like gibberish to you, but I want to point out something VERY significant. These are called skewTs and a forecaster can live and die by them. They don't lie, however the data usually doesn't come out until a day or even a few hours before a storm and for that they're kinda unreliable but looking back on things they provide some beautiful information. We have two important lines here a blue one and a red one (and several temperature lines that are important but again ill save that for a forecast next semester.) when these two lines are very close together and below the freezing line as they are, it means that the air is very saturated....LIKE REALLY SATURATED in this case. This will lead to large snow storms, with large snow flakes and because there was such a deep layer of saturation we knew we had quite the storm on our hands.

The initial storm did drop what a lot of snow enthusiasts were predicting (ill admit I was a tad short with my 9-12 inches) and dropped a good 12-16 inches on us, however a second layer of moisture doubled over behind the low pressure system and dropped another 4-8" which is what screwed over a lot of forecasts. the euro saw it, and Im ashamed I ever doubted it. I do feel smart for trusting its track over that of the Canadian I just wish I had trusted the numbers a little more. This second wave was clearly visible too, it hit on the night of the thirteenth my roommate looked out the window and asked me if we were finished, to which I turned to him and said

followed by a terrible game of thrones joke

It had already fallen at an absurd rate, and kept falling at a ridiculous rate completely shooting my forecast out of the water. Either way I digress, my friend was warning me all week that someone in Virginia was getting hit with "the bullseye" he predicted central Virginia would get it and receive 20+". He was right about the amount, wrong about the location, make no mistake we got it and we got absolutely crushed by snow literally and figuratively.

I hope it didn't disturb everyones work schedules and I hope everyone was safe and got to kind of enjoy the snow like I know I did. We went sledding behind my apartment and brought out a cooler....beer and sledding great combination. Anywho im going to post many more things on this tomorrow that draw this storm to a starking resemblance to the snowmageddon storm that im sure some alumni here remember...like seriously the soundings are almost identical. but....its really really late and I do have class tomorrow so I bid you all a farewell and there will be plenty of information posted tomorrow!

PS! JOE would it be possible to get a weather tag? I hate posting these things under tags like derp haha thanks again guys